Miracle and Machine

Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media

Michael Naas

The only previous sustained discussion of "Faith and Knowledge" was published over a decade ago, in Hent de Vries's Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. It was neither as clearly articulated nor as comprehensive as the discussion in this book, which will be crucial to anyone seeking to teach this important essay.

"Faith and Knowledge" contains central sections on religion and media; it is also one of the first major articulations of the theory of the "autoimmune" that preoccupied Derrida in the final years of his life.

Naas is the only one of the main English-language Derrida translators who is primarily a philosopher by discipline-thus he is uniquely qualified in both his sensitivity to Derrida's language and his conceptual grasp of Derrida's disciplinary context.

Miracle and Machine

Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media

Michael Naas

Description

Miracle and Machine is a sort of "reader's guide" to Jacques Derrida's 1994 essay "faith and knowledge," his most important work on the nature of religion in general and on the unprecedented forms it is taking today through science and the media. It provides essential background for understanding Derrida's essay, commentary on its unique style and its central figures (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Heidegger), and assessment of its principal philosophical claims about the fundamental duplicity of religion and the ineluctably autoimmune relationship among religion, science, and the media. Along the way it offers in-depth analysis of Derrida's treatment of everything from the nature of religious revelation, faith, prayer, sacrifice, testimony, messianicity,
fundamentalism, and secularism to the way religion is today being transformed by globalization, technoscience, and worldwide telecommunications networks.

But Miracle and Machine is much more than a commentary on a single Derrida text. Through references to scores of other works by Derrida, both early and late, it also provides a unique introduction to Derrida's work in general. It demonstrates that one of the very best ways to understand the terms, themes, claims, strategies, and motivations of Derridean deconstruction from the early 1960s through 2004 is to read critically and patiently, in its spirit and in its letter, an exemplary text such as "Faith and Knowledge." Finally, Miracle and Machine attempts to put Derrida's ideasabout religion to the test by reading
alongside "Faith and Knowledge" an already classic work of American fiction that is more or less contemporaneous with it, Don DeLillo's 1997 Underworld, a novel that explores the same relationship between faith and knowledge, religion and science, religious revelation and the World Wide Web,messianicity, and weapons of mass destruction in a word, in two words, miracles and machines.

Miracle and Machine

Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media

Michael Naas

Author Information

Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. His most recent books include Taking on the Tradition: Jacques Derrida and the Legacies of Deconstruction and Derrida from Now On (Fordham).

Miracle and Machine

Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media

Michael Naas

Reviews and Awards

"Naas has opened a unique access to the way Derrida thinks and writes, which will be of great importance both for continental philosophy of religion and for our understanding of Derrida's place within it. The careful scholarship, philosophical insight, and immense readability of this book will make it an indispensable resource for anyone who seeks to come to terms with Derrida's arguments."-Martin Hägglund, Harvard University

"This book is overflowing with insights and broad perspectives at the same time that it offers an authoritative summation, overview, and progress report on Jacques Derrida's considerable work on religion and its impact on the contemporary world."-Henry Sussman, Yale University